Witness in Syndicato federal trial: ‘I was scared of him’
Woman lived with accused, testifies he spoke of drug dealer’s murder
She showed up to U.S. District Court in Las Cruces without identification, looking bewildered and a little scared.
As Morgan Ramirez began to testify April 30 as a prosecution witness against her ex-boyfriend and alleged Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico gang member, Joe Lawrence Gallegos, she bit her lower lip and tears welled in her eyes.
The 30-year-old woman recalled that she and Gallegos had lived together in his Los Chavez mobile home near Belen, where there was an add-on room without lights or windows that she testified, “used to creep me out.”
She testified about the day Joe Gallegos told her not to worry, that “someone may have gotten shot in there, but no one died.”
That conversation occurred, she told the jury, sometime after a heroin dealer named Adrian Burns was found shot in the head, a plastic bag covering his face. He was handcuffed and partially burned. His car was nearby, having been set on fire in a wooden area near the Rio Grande.
Burns was Gallegos’ drug dealer, and Gallegos, along with younger brother Andrew Gallegos, had been suspects in the Nov. 12, 2012 murder, court records state. They were arrested by New Mexico State Police, but criminal charges were dismissed a month after the murder. A Socorro magistrate judge concluded there was insufficient evidence.
But both Gallegos brothers are now on trial in Las Cruces on federal violent crime in aid of racketeering murder charges in Burns’ death. They have pleaded not guilty.
Morgan Ramirez, who is 18 years younger than Joe Gallegos, testified about another conversation in which she said Gallegos told her “they tried to shoot him (Burns) in the head and it got stopped by a bone in his ear.”
Joe Gallegos told her that Burns didn’t get robbed before his death but was killed because he had “a big mouth,” she testified.
Anytime Burns’ name was mentioned, Ramirez testified, Joe Gallegos would say: “Yeah, he sure does.” (She took that as apparent reference to his fiery demise.)
Ramirez testified that said she never told anybody about the comments back then and ended her on-and-off again relationship with Joe Gallegos in 2013.
Upon cross-examination, Ramirez quickly regained her composure. She acknowledged she was facing a first-degree murder charge in the fatal shooting of an Edgewood gas station clerk on Feb. 11.
Ramirez, along with six others, are also charged with armed robbery and tampering with evidence in that case. She was released on her own recognizance and is on house arrest pending trial.
Ramirez is also facing felony forgery and theft of identity charges in a separate case filed earlier this year. She conceded during cross examination that she also has a January 2016 felony forgery charge pending and a November 2016 charge of receiving or transferring a stolen vehicle.
Joe and Andrew Gallegos of Los Chavez, a community north of Belen, are two of the alleged SNM defendants facing possible life in prison on federal criminal charges if convicted of committing violent crimes to further the gang’s criminal enterprise.
Two other Gallegos brothers — Frankie and Ben — are currently serving time in federal prison, according to federal court records.
Frankie is alleged to be running the SNM prison gang in the federal corrections system, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit.
Of the two brothers on trial in Las Cruces, Andrew Gallegos has a long list of prior convictions, including criminal sexual penetration, according to the state Corrections Department. His record shows more than a dozen arrests, including trafficking a controlled substance, federal records show.
Older brother Joe has more than 20 prior arrests on charges ranging from aggravated robbery, to assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at a dwelling and assaulting a prison guard, court records state. His convictions include intimidating a witness, assaulting a police officer and being an habitual offender.
Asked whether she was expecting a benefit from the government for her testimony, Ramirez replied, “I am trying to take care of myself on my own. I’m doing everything so I can get my life figured out.”
She acknowledged that Gallegos “did take care of me” and had asked her to marry him.
“In the end,” Ramirez testified, “I was scared of him.”